This team. I mean, this team. You can just never have a simple “Juan Uribe is being activated from the disabled list, and here’s the corresponding move” with the Dodgers ever, apparently. Uribe is back tonight after missing 34 games on the disabled list, and he’ll be hitting sixth and playing third base. But we knew that for a solid three hours without knowing how he was getting on the roster, as we waited for the Dodgers to get the results of an MRI on Hanley Ramirez‘ shoulder. Eventually, barely 30 minutes before game time, we learned that Ramirez would avoid the disabled list, and that Carlos Triunfel would be optioned back to Triple-A instead.

Cardinals

Dodgers

7:10pm PT

Los Angeles, CA

3B

Carpenter

2B

Gordon

LF

Holliday

RF

Puig

1B

Adams

1B

Gonzalez

SS

Peralta

LF

Kemp

C

Molina

CF

Ethier

RF

Craig

3B

Uribe

CF

Jay

C

Butera

2B

Ellis

SS

Rojas

P

Wainwright (R)

P

Beckett (R)

You probably don’t have to think too long about how I feel about this. While I understand that it seems really, really weird to want Ramirez to be gone and to have Triunfel and Miguel Rojas sharing shortstop, it’s hard to be happy about this. If you’ve read this site for any length of time, then you know how much we hate seeing guys try to “tough it out,” only to make injuries worse.

That goes triple for someone both as fragile and valuable as Ramirez, and since his shoulder injury is both serious enough to keep him out of the lineup for the third day in a row — out of shortstop for the fourth, since he DH’d in Kansas City — and to get him an MRI, it’s clear that something isn’t right. I often say that I’m not a doctor and I haven’t looked at the injury first-hand and that’s true, but I can still be a rational decision-making human being who has seen this sort of thing go wrong far too many times. If he doesn’t injure himself more seriously, then he’ll sit unavailable on the bench for who knows how many days, which isn’t a great position to put Don Mattingly in.

Anyway, it’s probably not worth getting worked up over, but it’s frustrating. In the mean time, Uribe is back, the Cardinals are in town, and Josh Beckett against Adam Wainwright is surprisingly a fascinating pitching matchup.

Mike wrote daily for over six long years (2007-13) about the Dodgers at Mike Scioscia’s Tragic Illness, which was named 2011′s “Best Sports Blog” by LA Weekly. He can currently be found writing multiple times per week at FanGraphs and ESPN, has been a producer and editor for Sports on Earth, and built The Hardball Times. He lives in New York City and will probably be asleep or on vacation when awesome things happen.

Very, very good. Likely All-Star, likely comeback player of the year. Probably a top 10, maybe top 6 pitcher. Not going to win the CY though. I will certainly take this. All b/c of that wonderful curveball